So I haven't had a WIP post in a while. . .

Sorry about that. I got so busy getting ready for C6 and the trip across country, and I've been alternating between busy or just mentally preoccupied with other stuff since then. (It was a surprisingly busy last couple of months.)

February is looking like it's going to be an interesting month. Not much currently going on event wise, but I've got minion meeting stuff for ECCC, plus potential jury duty on top of having to try to help several other people with costumes before ECCC.

ECCC is at the beginning of March, so I'm working on getting the remake of my modern era Mandalorian Beastmaster finished and official before then. (Set myself the goal of getting some trading cards made with it if I do.) I'm honestly not sure if I'll cart any other costumes over; I'm thinking about maybe wearing the Sith Scout, but it's going to depend on how my weight loss goes I think.

After ECCC I've got until D*Con to hopefully finish up a custom fantasy barbarian and my original series Trek uniform. Otherwise I'll just be there in mando gear again.

Anyway, WIP stuffs.

Beastmaster
I started upgrading the original kit a couple of months ago. I love the early crusader version I made, but really I think I dig the modern era one more. Because of my limited budget, I'm trying to make due with using as much as I can out of what I already have. (So far all I've had to buy was some more black paint for the horns and visor trim again as my last bottle is running low.) The chest, shoulder, and knee armor will all be the armor from my Femmeprotector kit. So the helmet is getting repainted with the green that I used on the protector (plus some of the gold/yellow on the cheeks), and I'll be repainting the gauntlets to the gold/yellow of the shoulders and knees. The helmet was a little beat up after being stored for so long (plus I had rushed it), so I first spent a little bit of time filling in old problem areas and doing a better job hiding the dent.

Currently I've got the base metal paint down; I need to get another can of the proper green spray paint and figure out where my weathering toothpaste went. Then I'll start the weathering and final painting process. (Not really looking forward to the reapplications of weathering I'm going to have to do after masking off areas to paint the yellow down then having to paint the black on after that.)

After it's fully painted and weathered I'll be sorting out how I'm going to do the back skirt like the last helmet had. (Visor will be smoked this time around since I don't have any more mirrored tinting.)

Sith Armor
This isn't one I'm necessarily trying to get done this year, as I've got no idea how long the fabric work for it is going to take. (We're talking complete pattern creation at this rate, and Pere has got a lot of other projects I'd rather he worked on.) But, I've been putzing around with the armor pieces just to get them out of my workspace.

The intended color scheme for it has changed from the original design since I decided to just work with paints I have. Right now it looks like the armor and mask will be bronze with ruby (rather than gold with maroon), and I'll probably be leaving the purple paint off and just working the purple into the fabric part. Currently the mask is curing a bit more before I spray down the ruby, then it will just be a matter of installing the strapping to hold it on and the lenses for the eyes. The shoulder armor might need one more pass with the bronze; we'll see tomorrow when I inspect it.

Going to start looking at Joanns for gem options to stick on the shoulders. My sith is fancy. :D

Lots of little things done (including new color concepts)

Nothing huge has been done this week, well, nothing I consider huge anyway. I did finally manage to get suited up and take some basic pictures to show the emergency changes to Kora's purple outfit. Not going to post those mostly because they're just rather blah "look everything is in place" kind of pictures, not the dynamic outdoor stuff I wanted to do. (Also, guess what I found just the other night cleaning out my laptop bag. . .yeah, that stupid fiddly plate I had to remake. *sigh* How it got into my computer bag I will never know.)

Haven't started on the new vest for Kora yet. Fingers crossed we get around to it tonight. Pere's got to draft the pattern for me as that's one area I'm rather very bad at. Once I get the pattern though he's donating his Arc trooper kama fabric to the cause so we can make it out of that since it's going to be so long until that costume of his is done anyway. Another hopeful side effect of drafting up a new vest for me is that I can use the top portion of it for my corset vest stuff I'm trying to figure out (it is, for the record, nowhere near fun trying to figure out how I can have a vest wherein the below bust portion fastens in the front and the bust and up portion fastens in the back 0_o ).

The steampunk mando has also been put on hold indefinitely. I'm using Chesty (the mannequin chest) to make Kora some new chest plates, rather than us keep waiting until we can get around to fiberglassing a body cast. So that means I have nothing for the steampunk outfits armor beyond the cod plate and helmet anymore. The helmet, however, I am going to fix up, so even if the rest of the costume never gets done I'll have a nice display piece. *chuckle* Debated the color arrangement for some time, but I think I'll be going with this top right version:

A little bit more fiddly work has been done on the new helmet for Tiika, the early crusader beast master kit. Trimmed down the sintra, drilled the pilot holes for the small horns, and started adding the epoxy putty to it. Need more epoxy putty to finish smoothing out stuff and building the horns, plus need glassing stuff to fiberglass the sintra and reinforce it. I'm thinking I'm going to attempt doing something similar to how people do the body forms then glass them for the big horns. Pictures following, though nothing really astounding yet (the red dots sort of show the small horn arrangement):

And in the "because I was bored" category, made a color concept for my eventual femprotector kit. Looking forward to making that one whenever I have the money. (Feel free to laugh at the helmet/neck area. . .I had to downsize the helmet image then splice the two images together so it looks a bit silly.) The cheeks won't be so minty green, and the shoulders/knees are supposed to be a goldenrod yellow not that almost orange shade. Silly scanner changing the colors on me.

Got the two buttons fixed into one of my brother's gauntlets. Maybe I've said that in a previous post? I can't remember. I was going to get the blaster barrel fixed onto the other gauntlet, but it appears to have gone missing for the moment. >_< Still debating other greeblies to add to his gauntlets, plus I need to figure out what size hose I'll have to get to attach to the back of the barrel.

That's about it for this week, I suppose. Hopefully next weekend I'll have some more progress worth showing. 

Argh emergency repairs (also, long post is long)

This past week Pere and I went back down to OR to pick up some of my stuff from my brother's apartment. We probably got maybe half, maybe. About a third of that was stuff that got moved into the room, the rest got stuck into storage (a hearty huzzah for the storage place having a deal going on, first two months are 50% off). Only brought one of my costume trunks up, but I put a fair amount of my ren fair stuff into it since I have no idea if we're going to be able to go to the Highland Games or the ren fair this year, but I wanted to have options just in case. There's enough room for my to stick Kora's purple kit in it, but first I need to kit up and take some pics for the CK clan just to show I'm still official quality I guess? (Sorry guys, I really don't completely get it, but I'll do it anyway. lol)

However, a problem had developed. After the NWC clan picnic back in August, I stuck my kit back into the trunk, and it pretty much hadn't moved since. When I pulled it out to place it in separate bags to make sure it got into the room rather than storage, I noticed that the shoulder bells had some funky patterns on them from the cape fabric. I figured, hey, no big deal, it's just a glue or residue from the fabric (it's one of those faux leathers). Oh no. As I discovered when I started trying to remove the "residue" the fabric had actually imprinted onto the paint. Aaand of course the only spray paints I brought back up this time around were my primer, satin black (to paint my rifle), and ivory (to paint the steampunk armor). *sigh* So I resorted to sanding them and running out to find yet another can of the metallic red I used on my helmet visor and hand plates. Thankfully Hobbytown had some, and it wasn't so expensive it made me cringe. So Kora's shoulder and diamond plate/s are now red. I admit I painted the diamond red only because I figured it would help balance out the red since I've tossed the girth belt for now. Short torso and big hips make girth belts a bit of a challenge. I also finally made the covers for the elastic on my shin armor; yay armor scrunchies. XD

Anyway, ultimately, when I switch back to the 2 piece helmet, all the armor is getting repainted to the airbrushed purple rather than that rattle can shade. The helmet will still be the same red/purple combo, and the hand plates will still be red, but all the other swirlies will go back to the correct swirly shade. Hoping to get some armored up pictures soon, but I've got to make a run to the storage unit first as I apparently forgot to take my gloves out of the armor box.

I've gotten some work done on the sniper rifle. Now that I have my dremel again it's a lot easier to move forward on some of this stuff since there is no way Pere's would have lasted (silly dremel with it's dying battery). Going to need some time in the garage to do some of the sanding though as I don't really want epoxy and bondo dust in the room. Need some of the epoxy Pere uses to fill in portions of the barrel. I think the body is mostly filled in given that a lot of the gun is going to be wrapped in fabric so there's not much of it that's ultimately going to be showing. However, because there is no way I will have it finished any time soon, I'm thinking I'm going to splurge a bit and snag one of those $10 Cad Bane blasters for kids. I'm small enough that I can use it well enough with some simple mods, and, luckily, I discovered today while digging through my hard greebly box that I have a barrel that may work as a barrel extension for it.

Aaand, I've even made some progress on the Early Crusader Beast Master helmet for Tiika. I know, it's kind of astounding that anything has been done to it. lol Let me tell you though, that sintra was a pain in the ass to get on there. I've still got to trim the sintra down (a LOT in the case of the back shroud), and after that it will probably sit there again for a time until I have some of that epoxy putty to get to work on smoothing things into the helmet, adding some of the small horns, and over all making it look like bone. Also still debating methods for making the larger horns. So what started out as this:

Has become this:

And on the "costumes that are not mine" front - Thanks to Sidd who sent me some gauntlets insanely cheap, I now have some of Imperial Outpost Armory's gauntlets to mod for my brother's mando kit. (For the record, I love IOA's stuff; it's there GM knees I use for Kora's purple kit and plan on using for the winter kit, as well.) I stripped the paint from two more Hasbro clone helmets for Pere (these two were actually not purchased originally for his purposes entirely. . .the RFs were traded for some other parts he needed). And if you're wondering how many clone helmets that makes now, I think that's about 6? Eh, somewhere around there. Still have a fair amount of the parts to finish sanding before stuff starts getting glued together and epoxied and all that fun stuff. I'm looking forward to that if only because it means there won't be plastic bags of helmet parts sitting around. lol

I think, shockingly enough, that's it for this week. If I manage to get some pictures later today (I almost said tomorrow before I remembered what time it was) I'll make another post to showcase that stuff. Here's hoping by the end of the week I'll also have a suitable pistol and gotten the rest of the clone helmet parts sanded at the very least.

Costume Archives: Tiika Ruslin (modern era beast master) RETIRED

Yes, I know it's misspelled. Shush. :P Made for me by the awesome Samantha: http://partnaznkrime.deviantart.com/

This kit was probably one of the more fun kits I've done so far. I estimate it probably took me about a week or two of collecting materials and work time to get it finished since I was aiming for a Halloween debut. Tiika was never worn to any conventions, I really did just make it all only to wear it to hand out candy.

Helmet was Kora's old V1 helmet. I lopped off the lower back to install the suede cloth and added the horns. Undersuit was another two piece set up. No vest, just the cheapo corset I added leather to. Cape and kama pieces were made from leather skirts I found at Goodwill (bearing in mind that at the Goodwills back home I could find leather skirts for $3-$5 rather than the $15-$20 I see on this coast). Rabbit hide was purchased at D*Con 2009. Belts and the wedge heeled suede boots were also Goodwill finds. Staff was PVC with some spare studs and leather glued on (this is the Staff of Doom, FYI ;) ).